GAURI DESHPANDE (1942-2003)

Gauri Deshpande was a writer in Marathi and English. She was born in Pune to Irawati Karve (q.v.) and Dinkar Karve, one of the sons of Dhondo Keshav Karve. She went to Ahilyadevi School, then Fergusson College in Pune where she took an MA in English literature. Her first poem in English was Between Births (1968), followed by Lost love (1970) and Beyond the Slaughterhouse (1972). After her mother’s death in 1970, she wrote a memoir of her in Marathi for a newspaper, and this opened up the field of Marathi writing to her with the idea of ‘kahani’ or women’s tales. She started with Ekek Pan Galawaya (1980), then Teruo Te Ani Kahi Door Paryant (1985), Ahe He Ase Ahe (1986), Niragathi Ani Chandrike Ga Sarike Ga (1987), Dustar Ha Ghat Ani Athang (1989), Mukkam (1992), Vinchurniche Dhade (1996), The Lackadaisical Sweeper (1997) (a collection of short stories in English), Goph (1999), and Utkhanan (2002). She translated Sunita Deshpande’s Ahe Manohar Tari as And Pine for What Is Not. She translated the 16 volumes of Richard Burton’s Arabian Nights into Marathi. She divorced her first husband Avinash Deshpande, and later married Surinder Singh. She had children from both husbands.